HATJE CANTZ

Published by Hatje Cantz.

In the archives of East Germany's Stasi secret police, there are countless photographs of failed escape attempts across the Berlin Wall. Here, German artist Arwed Messmer (born 1964) presents a complex collage of found, retouched and recontextualized visual records and Messmer's own photographs.

The Early Berlin Wall

In 1965-66, soldiers from the East German border patrol photographed 40 kilometers of the east side of the Berlin Wall, producing more than 1,000 images. In The Other View, Arwed Messmer (born 1964) digitally reconstructs these photographs to produce 300 panoramas, to which author Annett Gröschner provides captions.Please note that the book is bound with a special “open softcover” technique which allows the opened book to lie flat. To this purpose its end leaf has only been partially glued to the cover. This is no binding mistake, but a unique printing technique specially created for the book!